Here and Still Here
Here and Still Here
October Songs
October 28, 2018
U2 (But Not U)
She sits at the piano on a cold day as October ages fully. She takes a deep breath and smiles at him for a moment then puts her fingers on the keys.
She has been trying to learn U2's October since at least the last October. The song, she says, is both beautifully simple and simply beautiful but it is not easily mastered. She read on Wikipedia that the song was written quickly, almost as it was being recorded, after a briefcase holding some of the band's lyrics was lost in Portland, Oregon in 1981.
The song sounds almost as if it was made up on the fly. But that only makes it more urgent, yet calm, she thinks.
She plays.
She's still not good, really, as the notes fall off the piano rather than float away.
She persists. The tenderness of the music descends then settles then twists slowly, falling apart then becoming whole again as her fingers collapse across the keys and it’s a bit dark outside, a bit calm, a touch of unknown and undecided.
She plays October. She knows that he loves her so much that he cannot even hear the song, but will sit and listen to her as if frozen in time. --TK
Sunday, October 28, 2018